Dr. Pauli Murray, Black, queer, feminist, erased from history: Meet the most important legal scholar you’ve likely never heard of

Black, queer, feminist, erased from history: Meet the most important legal scholar you’ve likely never heard of

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is this Supreme Court's liberal hero, but her work sits on the shoulders of Dr. Pauli Murray

"Dr. Pauli Murray, a Howard University-trained lawyer, who began to argue in the 1960s, that the Equal Protection Clause should be applied to cases of sex discrimination in much the same way that it had been applied to cases of racial discrimination. Murray’s argument constituted what legal historian Serena Mayeri termed “reasoning from race,” in which race analogies were used to make clear the subordinate status of women."

...

" It was the piece she co-authored in 1965 called “Jane Crow and the Law” that Ginsburg cites as so influential in her thinking about legal remedies for sex discrimination. Nearly 10 years later, in 1953, Spottswood Robinson, Thurgood Marshall and others pulled out a copy of her senior paper and used it as a guide to strategize how they would argue the Brown v. Board case."

She's pretty big in my neck of the woods, and was the first African American to get a JSD at my law school. There "was" a little plaque to her in one of the residential colleges, I "think", but can't remember which, off the top of my head.

WrestlerBoy saidShe's pretty big in my neck of the woods, and was the first African American to get a JSD at my law school. There "was" a little plaque to her in one of the residential colleges, I "think", but can't remember which, off the top of my head.